Missing in Action (review)

With his father missing in action after being shot down over the Pacific in World War II, twelve-year-old Jay Thacker moves with his mother from their Salt Lake City home to the farm of his maternal grandfather. Jay, who is embarrassed and often teased regarding his half-Indian background, does not make friends easily, but he's nonetheless drawn into a group of neighborhood kids who play baseball regularly. As he struggles with anxiety over his father and adjustment to a new community, his grandfather sets him to work around the farm with Ken (Kenji), a teenager from the nearby Topaz internment camp. Jay likes Ken better than he's willing to admit, but he worries that his newly established friendship with his baseball buddies will be in jeopardy if they discover he associates with a "Jap"; he's also, given his own ethnic background, uneasy with his own biases against a person of another race. Though Jay's development is somewhat predictable, Hughes maps his emotional journey carefully. Additionally, the backstory on Jay's missing father, who turns out to have been less than the best of husbands or fathers, feels authentic, and it adds a poignant dimension to the exploration of prejudice.